2/16 Training With The U of M Coaches Watching

Today was cool for the girls because the Head Coach of the Gophers, Mikki Denney Wright and Assistant Coach Kate Cortis came out to watch the girls play.  Originally they were going to come out to the session after ours with the 15 and 16 Blue teams but they had heard about this group of girls and they wanted to come out and watch them as well.

I arrived at training 20 minutes ahead of time today and there were already 6 girls at the dome so we had an early start with the footskills.  With my renewed focus on footskills combined with keeping your head up we spent the 20 minutes before training and the first 20 minutes of training working on our footskills.

I started out with our footskills routine and then we did a dribbling progression:

1) Dribble around with your head up and on a swivel changing speed and directions
2) Add in if someone opens their hand to give you a hi five you make a fist and pound the hi five or if someone makes a fist you give them a hi five
3) Switch balls.  If someone yelled "Switch" you had to switch balls with that person.  I challenged them to switch balls with people who were 15 yds away from them, or to switch in creative ways like one ball high and one low
4) Bounce: If someone yelled "Bounce" you had to knock your ball off of theirs so your ball came back to you

Every time we added something in I would stop the girls for a second and have them think about whether they were just doing the most recent addition or if they were combining all the things from the beginning.  It was a good activity that I'm going to use again to reinforce the importance of building on how many things you can do at the same time.

After this we played Bulldog.  I can't remember if I wrote it down here but while I was coaching our Early ID clinic for 6-8 year olds 2 Sunday's ago and I was running through some of our dribbling games for that age group I kept asking myself why in the world I wasn't doing more of these games with the 13's.  All of the camp dribbling games are great for any age group because they are a great way to work on dribbling with limited or full out pressure while having fun.

After this we went into our 2v1 to 5v5 transition game.  For this one we started with a target forward and one defender on the field and the ball started with the other attacker on a post.  The points we focussed on today were making the 2v1, 3v2, and possibly the 4v3 go quickly.  I challenged them to try and score in under 8 seconds because that is about how much time they will have in a game with this distance and these numbers.  The other challenge was for the girls to recognize when they were not going to be able to score to reset and keep the ball.  These are the same points that we have been concentrating on for a while now and we are getting better at them.  Attack with speed, but recognize when to regroup.

We finished our on the field portion of the training with a 6v6 scrimmage.  In this scrimmage we really focussed on trying to make the danger pass that goes to the player on the far side of the field.  

For our small space training we went back to the footskills routine for 15 minutes.  It is outstanding to see that the girls are focussed and really working on improving each time we do this.  After that we did partner juggling and finished with the girls trying to juggle 1/2 the length of the dome and back without dropping the ball.

After training Coach Mikki said hello to the girls and talked to them for a little bit.

2/14 Training With Evan

With me out of town Evan led the training today.  He worked on dribbling with your head up, shooting, and then played a game that involved high pressure as a team.

In talking with Evan he said during the high pressure game that every time the group who was high pressuring as a team did not step together as an entire team (ie 3 players went and 3 stayed back) the other team combined around the 3 that were pressuring and then walked around the 3 that stayed back.  Evan said it was great to show the girls what happens when a couple of players hesitate.

It is also great for us on offense that we were able to punish the defending team through good offense.  All this work on defending has forced us to become much better at attacking.  I can't wait for us to get a couple of games in a row and begin to put everything together.

Only 4 weeks until the friendlies up at St Cloud and the games begin!

2/13 Scrimmage vs U14 Blue

A big concern among many coaches involved in this country is that our kids play too many games and don't train enough.  I invite all of those people to come up to Minnesota for a winter to help balance out their training to game ratio.  In the last 3 months we have had 34 trainings and 3 scrimmages.  a little over 11 trainings per game.  If I could chose my schedule for this time of year it would be to play 1 game every 2 weeks and have 2-3 weekends of mini tournament play.

I love the winter months because these are the months where I see the most improvement in our players because they don't have to worry about the outside pressure that games put on players.  In training players get to experiment and try things over and over with no worries.  The kids are free to express themselves and take time to grow and expand their game instead of worrying about battling to win a game.

Every person I have met tries more things in training and low pressure environments that they don't try in competitive games.  Using myself as an example I play in a league on Tuesday nights at Beilenberg that I would describe as a purely recreational league and I mess around with the ball and try things all the time because I know that if I mess up the league is just for fun.  This weekend I am down playing in a very competitive tournament in Madison.  Our team came down here just to have fun and get some good games in.  But once the whistle blew for our first game it was all business and we tried our hardest to win.  I didn't do half the things that I do in the Beielenberg league here because the game was so competitive and one mistake could have cost us the game.  (Side note we beat the team who has been a finalist each of the past 2 years and is one of the top teams in the tournament so a good start for us.)

Long story short, when the competitive juices get flowing, creativity and experimentation dip because the desire to do well usually overrides the desire to be creative.

On to the game vs the 14's.

The two things I was looking for today were improvement in our high pressure defense and being comfortable on the ball after we win the ball.

The 14's are really good at swinging the ball from side to side so I was very interested to see how we would do with keeping the ball on one side of the field and not allow their center mids to find their outside backs.  

In the first half our center mids were too cautious in stepping to their center mids in the middle of the field and in our attacking half because they were worried about either getting beat or covering the other players who were open.  I was on the field with the girls and I kept telling them to go for it, don't hesitate.  If you get there quickly and get their head down we can win the ball early and not worry about the switch.

It is a tough concept for players to understand that you can leave someone wide open if the player on the ball cannot get the ball to them because of the pressure she is under.  You'll get the screams from the sideline "Someone cover her!  She is all alone!"  

It is also a tough concept to grasp because if they hesitate and then step, the other team will find the far side player who is wide open and we will be in trouble.  Or if they are too far away to step and go it creates the same issue.  The girls have to be constantly reading the game and adjusting.

10 minutes in the 14's had a throw in and we tuned out for a split second and they found their danger forward, Jenna, and she turned up field with time and space to run at one of our center defenders.  Jenna is fantastic 1v1 player and she has speed to burn so I knew we were in a lot of trouble.  As Jenna skipped by our 1st center defender our other center defender stepped to her.   as she was stepping Jenna slotted a pass to their other forward and she finished the shot 1st time.  

On this goal our outside right back was caught too far up field and could not provide cover for our 2nd center back as she stepped.  Looking back at the goal, we had lots of issues that factored into this goal and it was a good thing that the 14's scored on the play so we can point back at this moment and work on them.  

A couple minutes later our center back tried to dribble one of the 14's forwards on top of our box with no cover.  She lost the ball and the 14's scored again.  I have no issue with my players experimenting in games with what they can do and what they can't.  The 14's stealing the ball and scoring is good feedback for that particular center back that she either needs to do a better move in that area of the field or look to pass out of pressure in that situation.

After that 10 minute spell we started to play better and we began to do a much better job of pressing as a team.  Our weakside forwards (Carly, Jordy, Kenzie, and Babo) also started to find the outlet space on the far side of the field.  Even though we did not get the ball to them all the time, our mids and defenders kept looking at them so I could tell that they were seeing the pass.  Something little like this made the scrimmage worthwhile to me.  We didn't even execute the pass all that often, but the girls understood the idea.

We had one really good movement that started with a combination with our outside left back and center mid that led to finding our right defender, Sizzle, over lapping our right forward to the corner.  It was a great run by Sizzle and the type of team movement we are looking for.

At half time we talked about the goals, our high pressure with our mids, our weak side forward floating out wide, and how we were staying calm under pressure.

The second half was a good half for us.  We denied the 14's switching the ball and we had much better balance as we went to high pressure.  Jenna still caused us problems with her speed, but besides that we played really well defensively.  On offense we were very composed on the ball.  

We didn't create that many chances in the game today but the chances will come as we continue to memorize the visual cues we are working on and the girls start to think less and just play because the ideas are becoming more natural.

*It was great to see how well the 14's were playing.  This was probably the most dangerous I have seen them in a while.  I was very impressed with them tonight.

What Is Creativity

On Monday night after I was done training the U16's Eric and I had a great conversation with Greg Wheaton about what creativity really is.  Greg hails from Brazil and is the best dribbler of the ball I have seen and he was my favorite coach growing up.

Greg mentioned that he was going to be taking his U15 boys team to Brazil this year and how he was excited at how much they are going to learn about the game from the trip.  They are going to play against players who are a year or two younger than them who will be able to dribble the ball just as well, if not better, than they will.  But the key that the Brazilians will possess is that they will pick their time to dribble.

Too many players here, in the US, mistake creativity with being able to do a ton of moves.  Just doing moves for the sake of doing moves isn't creative.  It is stupid.  

Think about the difference between Cristiano Ronaldo in his first two years at Manchester Utd.  He just dribbled around aimlessly and rarely created anything.  Sure it looked cool, but it wasn't creative and a majority of the time Utd ended up losing the ball.  

Now every time Ronaldo touches the ball there is the threat of a goal being scored.  That is creativity because now there is an end result to what he does.  Creativity can be as simple as an inside of the foot pass that puts someone in on goal with a through ball or it can be 3 step overs, a maradona, and a fake shot to beat a 3 defenders before scoring.  They are both creative because the end result is there.

It is important for us as coaches to start teaching the kids at a young age what creativity really is and show them all the different ways that it can be achieved. 

2/9 It Isn't Magic: Training With Ralph Akale

One of the best things about being with the Thunder Academy is that there are so many incredible coaches and trainers in the club.  Last Wednesday when I was at the dome talking with Ralph Akale and he mentioned that he would enjoy working with the 13 girls.  He had seen us play a couple of times against the South 12 boys where his son Mukwelle plays so he was familiar with the girls.

I was super excited when he said that he would be able to lead our training today and I was very interested in what he was going to teach the girls as Ralph is one of the premier Technical trainers that I have seen.

Ralph began the session by telling the girls that he cannot teach them anything.  I can only show you what to do.  You must teach yourself in order to learn anything.  Then he talked to the girls about what it takes to achieve their dreams, whether it is on the soccer field or off of it.  "You have to have a plan and you have to be dedicated."  He then asked the girls who their favorite player was and they responded that Cristiano Ronaldo was because he has great moves, he is fast, and he scores lots of goals.  (I doubt there are any other reasons why they like him.)

"How did Ronaldo get so good?" asked Ralph to the girls.  "Because he practiced everything thousands and millions of times.  Nothing that he does is magic.  It is repetition and dedication.  It is important when you are training to not get frustrated. When you get frustrated there becomes a wall between you and your dreams.  You cannot allow that wall to stop you.  You must refocus and continue to work."

Ralph then let the girls in on another secret of his "When you mess up today, I am going to laugh at you because it is funny.  I want you to laugh at yourself when I laugh.  If you laugh at yourself you will not get frustrated.  Laughter is key."

When he finished talking with the girls he taught the girls how to find their comfort zone with the ball.  The comfort zone is the zone where you can have your head up and the ball within reach of your feet.  The girls started working on it without moving the ball, then they moved it with the sole of their foot in a 5 yard space, and ended by dribbling around with their head up.  Ralph watched each of them and caught them every time their head went down he laughed and corrected them.

A couple of the girls became much stiffer with their bodies when they started dribbling so Ralph reenacted how they would look if they were running with out the ball.  Everyone laughed, again, and then he made another good point: "Don't change who you are because you have the ball.  When you have the ball, be yourself, relax and enjoy."

Next he had the girls stand without the ball and had them shift their weight from one foot to the other while moving their arms.  He then began to beat box a rhythm for the girls to move to and they all began to dance.  

It was funny to see a majority of the girls looking around at their teammates asking in their head "Is it cool to do this?  I must look really silly."  The girls who were doing this were stiff, uptight and had no rhythm.  The girls who were into it were loose, relaxed, and moving to the beat.  

Reflecting back on the session I couldn't believe how many girls were in the former category and worried about what the outside world thought about them dancing.  I have no doubt that when I do this with our U10's that they will go crazy dancing and they will not care at all what other people think because they are more concerned with dancing as opposed to thinking about what other people think about their dancing.  It was a good point for me to see so we can work on the confidence and self belief of the girls on a consistent basis with fun and crazy activities like this.

The next step with this was for the girls to begin doing the scissors around the ball while they were dancing to the beat.  It was amazing how much more rhythm the girls learned from the 20 minutes of doing this.  Comparatively speaking against all the other U13 girls teams I have seen, we have some of the most comfortable and creative girls on the ball, but the level that Ralph wanted them to do this at was way beyond what any of them were at.  The rhythm and coordination that Ralph was looking for was a great reminder for me to go back and revisit all of the basics and work to get them to another level.

Ralph then had the girls do this dribbling and the improvement was huge.

The last thing that Ralph worked on was a 4 move dribbling sequence.  

To recap the 80 minute session here is all that Ralph worked on:

Training set up:
-You and the ball
-Moving the ball with the sole of your foot
-Dribbling around with your head up
-Dance without the ball
-Scissors with the ball standing still
-Scissors with the ball moving: 5, 10, 15 times
-Roll, Scissors, Step, Reverse Cryueff-jump back with other foot 

That was it.  Incredibly basic, tons of repetition, focussed, fun and absolutely fantastic.  The training session really reinforced my belief that the top players training sessions are very simple with lots of repetitions.  There is no magic.

We are hoping that Ralph will be able to work with us a couple of more times through the year.